This week, in the wake of a shooting spree of a madman, which could not have been inspired by the “vitriolic rhetoric” of any mainstream political philosophy, the people were prevented from absorbing the full impact of events by the Left’s sad, yet predictable rush to blame it on people who had absolutely NOTHING to do with it. What a difference a year makes. This year, those who often presume their own “enlightenment” tripped over themselves in their rush to judgment, making specific public figures upon whom they have focused their own vitriol for years somehow responsible for the shootings in Tucson, and also took the opportunity to also make a large number of Americans (aka “the Tea Party”) unindicted co-conspirators as well. Unfortunately, this rush to judgment, which was completely unacceptable and impermissible when a far more tragic shooting spree committed by an acolyte of the “religion of peace” [the one constantly connected to kidnappings, suicide bombings, beheadings of westerners, and an inordinate amount of rapes and riots in western european countries] ran up a much higher butcher’s bill at Ft. Hood a year ago, was not only tacitly accepted among the same people who last year preached caution and “waiting until we had the facts” as reasonable, but also taking for granted that their breathless declarations were indeed correct.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the effigy burning. The narrative didn’t take.

Perhaps it was the fact that many average Americans didn’t appreciate being told by coastal elites and various political operatives that they were so stupid that they were incapable of discerning between the images evoked in political speech, and reality. Maybe they rejected the notion that the use of descriptive metaphors incited them to violence when being lied to and stolen from did not. Maybe it was because as the facts came out, it became apparent that this troubled young man was just a troubled young man, and that there was no connection at all between his decision to shoot a Congresswoman who he had been obsessed with for years and the “hateful rhetoric” we were being told motivated this horrific act. Maybe it was all of these things.

Regardless of the cause, many of these outlets and individuals grudgingly were forced to admit that the speech they were so quick to decry in others had nothing to do with the events last Saturday, while taking the position that it still could next time, which is why these dangerous people must be stopped. However, this bit of frantic and hypocritical wishcasting still wasn’t gaining traction with the public as a whole. Perhaps this is because the public has actually been paying attention for the last few years, and they weren’t as receptive to the idea that only one side of the political spectrum was guilty of such “crimes” as they might have been ten years ago. Perhaps it is because they don’t like being bullied. But by the time the President was finally able to put together his pep rallycampaign event memorial service (Now complete with cheering, catcalls, and free T-Shirts!!!), he had his opportunity to gauge the public’s mood, and he could tailor his remarks to a “teachable moment” that elevated him above the fray that he himself has eagerly engaged in in the not so distant past:

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy [– it did not –] but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.

Judging from the response to the speech, this move pleased some, but it strikes me more as a fatigue on the subject than it does the result of careful reflection. As for myself, I take this as the latest installment of their typical game of “SHUT UP!” when met with opposition to their ideas, goals, and plans. If the President really meant what he said, then even more than naming names, which he did not do (and which would not have been appropriate for a memorial), he could, for the first time in his political career, lead by example. His own record on “civility” and “working together” is woefully inadequate, which is why I found his renewed call for civility self-serving and unconvincing.

This is not the first time we heard the call for civility from the President.

That’s not someone who wants to “work together”. That’s not someone interested in “Civility”. That’s someone who will engage in lies, half-truths, and distortions to gain a political advantage. And his supporters? They actually do worse.

There is so very much more. Some excellent examples of the Left’s “Civility” are found here.

It isn’t that the Left has expended so much energy and money being extraordinarily uncivil with people who don’t agree with their ideas and policies, and who don’t meet with their approval. These things have definitely come to pass, but being an attorney, who goes to court often enough to understand how to characterize opponents, debate, and the “narrative”, it doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the shameless…yes I mean shameless attempt to impose a self-censorship that they cannot attain by other means, while at the same time, their own calls come on the heels of their manifestation of their own unwillingness to be “civil” and “work together”.

Let me be clear. I don’t like what you advocate for the country. As a student of law and history, I find your goals and agenda items diametrically opposed to the freedoms that our Founders recognized and that the Framers guaranteed. I am repulsed by your constant drive to respond to every perceived problem with more government. I am sickened by your constant willingness to divest the individual of any responsibility, and your apparent shock when the corresponding benefits are squandered and misused. I resent the persistent demonization of those who take risks, because they want to reap the rewards, or because that is simply part of their nature, as someone who takes advantage of and steals from his brother. I despise your willingness to institutionalize indolence, and build rolls and rolls of dependents and wards of the state, who can be reliably counted on to deliver votes and keep you in power. I find it despicable that you have invaded the field of public education and have not only robbed entire generations of Americans of their own history, but have inculcated them with the belief that they must be ashamed of the drips and drabs that you reveal to them through the cracked and warped lenses of your own misbegotten perceptions. Your efforts have been damaging to the greatest engine of innovation and scientific advancement in the last three centuries, and I condemn you for your pernicious attempts to snuff out the single brightest light of mankind’s freedom that the world has ever known.

I can’t “work together” with you, because we have very different beliefs and ideas about the future of this country. You want a nation that is no different from any other. One where the government is not just in my toilet bowl and my light sockets, but in determining my paycheck, and what part of my labor that I get to keep for myself. In what I power my vehicle with, and what vehicle it is. In the brightness of the light in my dining room and bathroom. In how I choose to defend my family and what I eat. In what I and others say. In what I read, and what I listen to and watch on television, and ultimately, what I think.

I want none of these things. I want the freedoms that our forebears wanted for us. I want the right to earn as much money as I feel like working for. I want the right to hire the right person for the job, not be forced to meet a nebulous and undefinable “diversity” criteria. I want the right to drive a Gaia-raping pavement predator, and fill the tank with the oil squeezed from the pelts of baby seals if that is what delivers the best performance for my money. I want a world where people have not just read the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers, but understand them. I want to live in a society that is not wedded to the idea that every society that is different is automatically equal to our own. I want to live in a society that celebrates its achievements instead of glossing them over and dwelling on our failures. I want to live in a society where I am free to waste what belongs to me in whatever fashion I wish, be it opening the windows and doors and turning up the heat in the winter, or having a double cheese and meat pizza after a quadruple bypass without my government, which exists to guarantee and defend my freedoms, tell me that I can’t, because it has that has assumed that power over me.

In such a situation, where the ideological lines are so clearly drawn, the “civility” that you get is it the civility you give. Your civility, for decades, has to been to tell us that we are stupid. To mock those who speak for our views. To paint anyone who believes as we do as being stupid, ignorant, and hateful. You have poured scorn, derision, and condescension upon us with the obliviousness of those who never gave a thought to what they were doing. Any attempt at a dialogue which doesn’t require those on our side to start with a premise that you are correct on any of these characterizations has been met with a vehement “Shut Up!”, and now, after days of engaging in savage slander and blood libel, now you wring your hands, and speak softly of civility, either as again, trying to control the speech of others, or in hopes of being treated with greater restraint than you and yours showed me and mine since Saturday morning?

Go to Hell.

Your orgy of hate and blame that started before the bodies even hit the floor of that Tucson Safeway last Saturday revealed everything important to any who still had doubts about who you really are. And I’ll be damned if I’ll be silent and polite about the people who I think are the real danger to America. Especially after they pantsed themselves in front of the country last week.

"I want these “…and I’m a communist” dumbshits to have a Coming to Jesus moment that they will NEVER forget. I want them staring in to the eyes of every American who knows that government has very specifically designated roles, and are fed-up to their eyeballs with the overeaching, paternalistic, oppressive monster that the Left (with help from the establishment Right) set loose on us. I want those greedy, lazy, control-freaky bastards quaking with fear when they are met with an electorate determined to wrest their liberties, including the right to fail, back from a government that would enslave us all to the service of a soul-killing mediocrity. I want their asses so horrifiyingly and memorably whipped that the mere memory will cow a century’s worth of socialist/communist/marxist acoyltes into an ashamed silence."
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"When a strict interpretation of the Constitution, according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws, is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we no longer have a Constitution, we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is according to their own views of what it ought to mean."--Justice Curtis, Dissent, Dred Scott v. Sanford

"The very idea of power, and the right of the people to establish government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government. All obstructions to the execution of its laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberations and actions of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency."- George Washington

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
-Plato

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
-Plato